Corporate Pride is looking a little less proud this year.
Companies seem to have followed a common Pride Month playbook for the past several years. The checklist included changing social media avatars to rainbow logos, sponsoring parade floats, making donations, or casting ads a little differently from the rest of the year.
This June, corporate Pride seems quieter amid a combination of cultural and political pressure against DEI in general, and the LGBTQ+ community in particular.
Brands have been dropping out of sponsoring Pride parades across the country, Pride merchandise collections are getting smaller, and Fortune 500 social-media avatars appear largely unchanged.
More broadly, companies have pulled back on diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives, or at least calling them DEI. The shift has stirred up criticism from both liberals and conservatives.
“We’re sort of facing a tidal wave of backlash against something that many companies have said they support,” Ike Silver, a marketing professor at the University of Southern California’s Marshall School of Business, told Business Insider.
This has made Pride Month a bigger balancing act for companies this year, particularly those that have openly embraced it in the past.
“There’s a little bit of a damned if you do, damned if you don’t sort of element to this,” said Graham Nolan, a PR professional who cofounded Do the Werq, a platform for queer representation in the marketing industry.
Brands face new backlash over their approaches to Pride Month
Pride Month had evolved over the past decade into something that companies perhaps felt obligated to participate in at the risk of appearing out of step with societal norms, Silver said.
“It’s really more about jumping on the bandwagon,” he said, “if you’re not getting a boost from it, you might as well not court the backlash.”
But as reactions to Target — and more recently BarkBox — have shown, brands that have openly embraced Pride Month in prior years face considerable risk stepping back (or even appearing to pull back) from it.
Target was one of the most prominent major consumer brands supporting LGBTQ+ Pride. Two years ago, it included Pride merchandise across its stores, but this year and last, it offered a smaller, gentler selection in about half of its locations. A company spokesperson said Target also sponsors local events.
“We are absolutely dedicated to fostering inclusivity for everyone,” the spokesperson said in a statement to BI.
BarkBox found itself in hot water this month when an employee’s internal communication suggested the company pull promotions for its Pride merch, comparing them to MAGA products. The leaked message sparked outrage and an apology from founder and CEO Matt Meeker, who said the company stands by its Pride products.
Related stories
Business Insider tells the innovative stories you want to know
Business Insider tells the innovative stories you want to know
Companies haven’t had the best time sticking the landing with Pride
Pride Month, Nolan said, became “more a checklist of corporate fears than it was a checklist of consumer desires.” People never asked for brands to add rainbows to their logos, for example, Nolan said.
Some companies have faced pressure from more left-wing groups that accused them of “rainbow washing,” or capitalizing on LGBTQ+ people without providing a tangible benefit to the community.
Pride Month became more of a minefield in the last two years as conservatives took aim at Bud Light’s partnership with transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney, and followed quickly by Target facing blowback for its 2023 Pride merchandise collection.
While Bud Light and Target walked back their LGBTQ+ campaigns, the retreats didn’t exactly earn them goodwill from either side of the political spectrum.
The division between the sides has only grown more pitched under Donald Trump’s second presidency.
For brands, it can feel like consumers “who oppose the stance see any whiff of support as negative, and those that support the stance will only give you credit if they think that you’re really in it,” Silver said. “They won’t sort of reward these soft steps.”
Nolan said crafting the right message is increasingly difficult, especially since the very act of speaking to one group can de-emphasize another.
“When it’s not perfect, what you get is conservatives who are angry about the fact that the work exists, and then you’ve got liberals who go, ‘Yeah, this is a nice ad, but I know this about your hiring practices,'” he said.
New risks change the calculus — and provide new opportunities
Beyond the growing political polarization, the issue is further complicated for companies by the threat of government pressure. Trump has shown a willingness to go after companies because of their diversity policies.
While taking a stand in the face of real risk can make a company’s motives seem more sincere (think Costco or Ben & Jerry’s founders, which have defended their stances on diversity), Silver said consumers don’t typically punish companies that remain truly neutral.
Whether they choose to publicly embrace Pride Month or not, Nolan hopes companies will strategize behind the scenes about strengthening their relationships with the LGBTQ+ community year-round.
With shoppers weighing in on social media and scrutinizing companies’ moves over the past months, it’s clear that shifting positions in either direction can be risky.
“When you flip-flop, you lose the people who supported you when you are taking a position,” Silver said. “And you don’t necessarily regain the people who are against your position.”
